David Silverman \/ Getty Images. All rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n
One of the most persistent and constant themes in both the Israeli
\nand the international approach to the Palestinian issue has been the
\nnotion that the road to peace has a strong economic dimension. According
\n to this thinking, if the Palestinian economy and institutions of
\ngovernance are developing and Palestinians are feeling more prosperous
\nand hopeful regarding their material future, the chances for a
\nsuccessful peace process increase, the prospects for a Palestinian state
\n improve, foundations are laid for Palestinian-Israeli trust and, at a
\nminimum, the danger of violence subsides.<\/p>\n
Norway has been a
\nprominent and consistent advocate of this approach, both by generous
\neconomic support (close to 11 billion Norwegian kroner since 1993) and
\ntaking a leadership role internationally in offering external support
\nfor Palestinian state development aschair of the Ad Hoc Liaison
\nCommittee (AHLC), Local Development Forum (LDF) and the Joint Liaison
\nCommittee (JLC). Oslo is in good company. The pre-1948 British Mandate,
\nthe Zionist movement and the post-1967 Israeli occupation all adopted a
\nsimilar policy.<\/p>\n
Along with many aspects of the
\nIsraeli-Palestinian peace process, this \u201ceconomic peace\u201d approach has
\nfailed. The time has come to reassess it.<\/p>\n
To be sure, economic
\nwell-being is a good thing. Many Palestinians, particularly in the Gaza
\nStrip, are extremely needy. The very existence of the Palestinian
\nAuthority with its multiple benefits for Palestinians in the West Bank
\nis dependent on generous international grants. All these development and
\n aid projects are vital and should continue. But not if the primary
\nrationale is peace.<\/p>\n
This conflict does not derive from economic roots and it is not fed by economic deprivation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This conflict does not derive from economic
\nroots and it is not fed by economic deprivation. It is political, with
\nan increasingly strong element of religious extremism on both sides. In
\nthe Israeli-Palestinian case, enhanced trust is not a corollary of
\nprosperity and prosperity has not nourished peace.<\/p>\n
As far back as
\n Britain\u2019s 1937 Peel Commission report on the emerging conflict, the
\n\u201cconciliatory effect on the Palestinian Arabs of the material prosperity
\n which Jewish immigration would bring in Palestine\u201d was found to have
\nfailed asa catalyst for coexistence despite British mandatory
\nexpectations to the contrary. Indeed, as early as 1923 Revisionist
\nZionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky condemned the concept that \u201cthe Arabs
\nwill voluntarily. . . . sell out their homeland for a railroad network.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet
\n immediately after Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip in June
\n1967, it proceeded to ignore these admonitions. Israeli Minister of
\nDefense Moshe Dayan threw open the green line boundary and encouraged
\nIsraelis and Palestinians to go back and forth and interact at the
\ncommercial level. Legions of Palestinian day laborers came to work in
\nIsrael. Both sides prospered. Israeli security officials responsible for
\n the Palestinian territories were certain a formula had been found to
\nprevent violence and ensure harmony despite the failure to find a
\npolitical solution.<\/p>\n
It took 20 years, until the outbreak of the
\nfirst intifada in December 1987, to prove them wrong and force at least a
\n partial closing of borders and imposition of restrictions on economic
\ninteraction. Yet the emphasis on prosperity as an ingredient for peace
\ncontinued. In July 2000, when I represented Prime Minister Ehud Barak in
\n recruiting American Jewish and media support for a hoped-for
\nbreakthrough at Camp David, a key talking point was the need for
\nWashington to provide funds for Palestinian desalination projects and
\nfor refugee compensation in order to facilitate the political process.<\/p>\n
In
\n 2002, after two intifadas, the international community pressured
\nPalestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to appoint a distinguished
\n international economist, Salam Fayyad, as finance minister\u2014from 2007
\nuntil 2013 he was also prime minister\u2014again on the assumption that
\neconomic development and interaction with Israel would help advance a
\npeaceful settlement. In 2007, too, the \u201cQuartet\u201d (a peacemaking
\ninitiative involving the US, EU, UN and Russia) delegated former British
\n prime minister Tony Blair to promote economic development in the
\nterritories as a key ingredient of an eventual peaceful settlement (he
\nresigned in 2015). Earlier, in 2005, outgoing World Bank president James
\n Wolfensohn served briefly as the Quartet\u2019s representative for the
\nabortive project of promoting economic development in the Gaza Strip as
\nIsrael withdrew.<\/p>\n
In 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s Likud campaign in
\nKnesset elections featured an \u201ceconomic peace\u201d platform for developing
\nthe Palestinian Authority as a necessary prelude to peace talks. To this
\n day, hard-line Israeli politicians like Naftali Bennet promote ideas
\nfor developing the 40 percent of the West Bank that is under full or
\npartial PA control (areas A and B) as a means of ensuring peaceful
\ninteraction in the absence of a viable peace process, which they either
\noppose or do not believe is feasible.<\/p>\n
Further, the international
\ncommunity has responded to all three mini-wars between Israel and
\nGaza-based Hamas since 2007 by pledging heavy infrastructure aid for the
\n Strip and its population on the assumption that Gaza\u2019s severe economic
\nplight and its war damages, rather than Hamas\u2019s extremist Islamism, are a
\n major cause of these conflicts. In May 2015 President Obama, in
\ndeclaring that there was no chance for a peace process in the year
\nahead, nevertheless allowed that the US would seek to create \u201cbusiness
\nopportunities and jobs\u201d in the Palestinian territories in order to build
\n trust between the two sides.<\/p>\n
both Palestinian intifadas erupted at times of relative prosperity
All these \u201ceconomic peace\u201d
\napproaches have failed. They grossly undervalue the Palestinian national
\n drive: the political, ideological and (increasingly) Islamic currents
\nthat inform the Arab side of the conflict. This in turn points to a
\nserious lacuna in strategic understanding on the part of both Israelis
\nand third parties. Perhaps to drive home the point, note that both
\nPalestinian intifadas erupted (in 1987 and 2000) at times of relative
\nprosperity; and as noted, even the Palestinian revolt against the
\nBritish Mandate that broke out in 1936 began at a time of economic
\nprogress.<\/p>\n
Today, Israeli security authorities seek to bring more
\nWest Bank laborers to work in Israel and to deliver more goods and
\nservices to the Gaza Strip, arguing that this will distance Palestinians
\n from terrorism. As individual breadwinners, perhaps. But this approach
\nhas failed repeatedly at the societal level.<\/p>\n
By all means, give
\nthe Palestinians development aid. But let us not delude ourselves that
\nthis will facilitate a two-state solution anytime soon.<\/p>\n
For that
\nto happen, we must first witness radical changes in both sides\u2019
\nleadership profiles, a far-reaching mutual readiness to cease insisting
\non totally deadlocked narrative demands like recognition of a Jewish
\nstate and the right of return, and a much calmer Arab Middle East.<\/p>\n
This piece was first published on Verdidebatt.no on 14 March 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" David Silverman \/ Getty Images. All rights reserved. One of the most persistent and constant themes in both the Israeli and the international approach to the Palestinian issue has been the notion that the road to peace has a strong economic dimension. According to this thinking, if the Palestinian economy and institutions of governance are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}